REPORT ON FORESTS. B57 
Owing to the substitution of bags for barrels and iron for wooden 
hoops, there is practically at present no demand for hoop-poles. 
At one time many people found employment in gathering the 
leaves of the upland sumac.* These were ground at the mills 
and were used for tanning. 
The principal industries of the present are the cutting of 
wood for fuel and the working of timber for constructive pur- 
poses. Several minor products of more or less importance are 
also collected. 7 
Wood for fuel may be divided into two classes—pole-wood 
and cord-wood. When small-sized trees are cut in the pole 
stage, such as oak coppice, they are merely stripped of their 
branches, and are not divided into regular lengths, and are sold 
as pole-wood, which is consumed locally and bought and sold 
by the one-horse or two-horse wagon-load. ‘This wood is abund- 
ant and has little worth. If killed by fire, as is often the case, 
it is not seriously injured for fuel, although slightly charred, 
and often disagreeable to handle. Large quantities of this wood 
may be had for the asking. ‘The person who sells pole-wood 
usually receives little more than his labor is worth in cutting 
and delivering it to the purchaser. 
Cord-wood + is cut into sticks four feet long, and split once. 
It is usually either pure pine or oak, sometimes mixed. If located 
near a railroad or along a good wagon-road, there is a slight 
margin of profit in this wood. In many parts of the Coastal 
Plain of New Jersey it has no worth, because the cost of cutting 
and transportation is equal to or even more than the market 
price. Often, however, if the owner has teams of his own, he 
cuts the wood when slack of other work and transports it in 
order to furnish himself with labor. His wood-land really has 
* The chestnut oak (Quercus prinus) furnishes the best tanning material of eastern trees. It is 
hardly safe to recommend the planting of trees for tan-bark owing to the fact that other means of tanning 
are in process of development, and new and perhaps better methods are liable to replace the old. There 
are a few people, however, who believe that oak bark will be worth more a few years hence. The use of 
quebracho, from South America, has had an important effect on this industry, but quebracho wood and 
hemlock will not last forever. The chestnut-oak is common in South Jersey, and one should have no 
hesitation in planting it. It grows fairly well in the shade of pine trees. In spite of the use of many other 
tanning materials, the choicest leather is “‘ oak-tanned.’’ 
A cord, in Jersey, is four feet wide, four feet high and eight feet long. It contains eight cord feet 
or one hundred and twenty-eight cubic teet, or 3.62 cubic meters. 
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